INTERNATIONAL: The Enemy Gasps and Wavers

The greatest U.S. victories in Africa last week
were political rather than military. They followed months of shrewd
State Department maneuvering (see p. 75). It began in the winter of
1940, when worldly, good-natured Robert Murphy, U.S. Counselor of
Embassy at Vichy, was sent to Algiers as a supersonic detector of
French African affairs. It was Mr. Murphy who arranged with General
Maxime Weygand to deliver U.S. food to the French colonies. Mr. Murphy
and scores of U.S. agents saw that the food got there. In the...